All posts tagged ‘Mars Curiosity Rover’

Yes, I know this song has had its share of parodies, but this one is now my favorite. How often to you get to see those blue polo shirt-wearing engineers busting a move? Never. But this video has them dancing and singing and doing what I’d imagine happened after the cameras turned off once the Curiosity landed. There’s a nod to the famous jar of peanuts and even Neil deGrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan are worked into the song!

Tonight is the night that years of scientific research and engineering will either pay off, or fail spectacularly. This is one of those moments in scientific discovery that merit staying up all night, or setting an alarm to wake up and watch. Mars Curiosity is scheduled to land tonight at 10:31 p.m. PDT, Aug. 5 (1:31 a.m. EDT Aug. 6).

Curiosity will reach the surface in a way that no space craft has ever landed — it will be lowered to the surface on nylon cords by a rocket-controlled hover crane that will return to orbit after the drop. This entire process is automated and expected to take seven minutes. If you aren’t an expert on the mechanics of how this whole process occurs, take five minutes and watch the latest NASA JPL video titled: Challenges of Getting to Mars: Curiosity’s Seven Minutes of Terror, below.

When the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL, also known as Curiosity) launched November 26, 2011, it started a scientific expedition like no other before it. While the majority of the modules on the MSL won’t start collecting science data until it powers up on the Martian surface, one instrument has already logged 221 days of scientific data: The Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) has been taking readings of the ambient radiation on the entire voyage to Mars. RAD has recorded five separate solar flares. According to the RAD principle investigator, Don Hassler of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, CO, this data has already been used by scientists planning future manned missions.

Once Curiosity safely lands on the surface of Mars the rest of the science activities begin. Curiosity’s main science objective is to look for areas on the Martian surface that could have sustained microbial life. The Gale crater was chosen as the perfect landing site because it shows many of the properties of formerly aqueous terrain, but its small 12-mile landing zone has always made it too risky to attempt a traditional air bag landing.

Assuming all goes well tonight, the Martian rover — which is as big as a VW Bug — will increase our knowledge base of the Red Planet for years to come. If you would like to catch your own piece of Mars Curiosity fever, head over to the Mars Curiosity Lego CUUSOO site and lend your support to turning it into a retail model.

Would you like to bring a piece of NASA hardware home to give to your kids? Me too!!! Stephen Pakbaz has been working on the next best thing, a Lego 1:20 scale model replica of the Mars Curiosity rover, currently on its way to the red planet aboard the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL). Stephen was formerly a mechanical engineer at Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) where he actually designed parts for Mars Curiosity.

The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) is a NASA project designed for long-term exploration of the Martian surface. MSL successfully launched on November 26th, at 7:02 am PDT, and is scheduled to land on the Mars Gale crater sometime between August 6-20, 2012. All onboard checks to this point have shown that the launch was completely successful and that the journey to Mars is well underway.

The MSL is carrying the Mars Curiosity rover, whose primary scientific goal is to determine if the Martian surface is or was ever habitable. The onboard laboratory will study rocks, soil and geological surroundings to detect the chemical building blocks of life. With this knowledge, scientists here on Earth will be able to create an accurate picture of the Martian environment.

The MSL mission is the premiere mission in the next decade of NASA planetary exploration and will demonstrate a number of cutting-edge technologies.

The mission will demonstrate the ability to land a very large, heavy rover on the surface of Mars (which could be used for a future Mars Sample Return mission that would collect rocks and soils and send them back to Earth for laboratory analysis).

The mission will also demonstrate the ability to remotely land more precisely onto a 20-kilometer (12.4-mile) landing zone.

The Mars Curiosity rover is also expected to travel 30 feet per hour with extended mobility (5-20 kilometers or about 3 to 12 miles) to get a much more diverse samples of the martian surface then previous rovers.

The rover is powered by a radioisotope power system that uses the heat generated by plutonium’s radioactive decay. This power source gives the mission an operating lifespan on Mars’ surface of a full Martian year (687 Earth days) or more.

We at GeekMom are going to keep a close eye on this mission. We will update again in August for the landing.